Doomsday Stories is a post-apocalyptic horror anthology film which as far as I can tell works as a quasi-sequel to 1992's Hell on Earth II: The Arena of Death. The budget over the four short films and the wraparound segment appears to be very low, but this leads to some purposely cheesy moments which couldn't help but bring some joy to my rotting heart.
This takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where society has completely collapsed after the accidental release of a man-made virus (which transformed much of humanity into zombie like creatures dubbed 'meanies'). In the future, wasteland survivor Zorack (Phil Herman - Hell on Earth II: The Arena of Death) comes across a handwritten book which chronicles various different accounts of the unfolding apocalypse. Taking the form of the wraparound segment, this was a decent enough way to bring the stories all together. Not much really happens, but that is kind of explained away by being set at a time when much of the meanies have expired. It ends on a high note with a cliffhanger that didn't feel like it needed to be resolved. Instead, in a Mad Max type of way this seemed to serve as a footnote in Zorack's path. Special mention goes to the flashback sequences here which has Herman humorously playing his younger self via the use of wig and baseball cap.
The first proper film is A Broken Promise which was directed and co-written by Derek Braasch. Taking place in 2021, this follows survivor Rick (Justin Bower) and his dog Lucy as they roam the deserted backroads of post-apocalyptic America. This took up nearly forty minutes of the anthology and felt like it could have been streamlined a bit. The feeling of isolation was well made, but only because for much of this it is just Rick and his dog wandering empty roads and exploring mainly empty buildings. There were moments of excitement here, specifically an encounter with a group of men at a garage, and the violent finale, but much of this felt as aimless as the lead character seemed to be, though I did like how flashbacks to earlier in the apocalypse were integrated into the present day moments.
The second short is Bomb Threats which is also the shortest. Featuring just the two actors, and directed by James Panetta, this follows a woman (Debbie D who also wrote this) in the very early days of the collapse of society. With the government telling its citizens to seek shelter in bomb shelters, she decides to seek out local man Alvin (Jim Ewald), in order to use his private shelter rather than having to go to one of the larger ones. This turns out to be a bad idea as the man has some troubling ideas for survival. At about fifteen minutes this didn't have time to out stay its welcome. Each short film was better than the one before it, there were some fun cheesy effects during the scene when the woman is watching TV, though the story took an unpleasant turn later on and it didn't feel like it had too much life to it.
Forever Man is the penultimate film and was when I really began to enjoy Doomsday Stories, both this and the final film had really crazy plots which excelled in the low budget settings. Marcelo Fabani wrote, directed, edited and did the post production on this insane story about a man who is forced to become a cyborg known as Frank 21 (Chandra Mouli Nandy) as part of a government program designed to sell organs to other countries. It only had the four actors, which is impressive seeing as the wild story felt to me like its cast was much bigger. With sci-fi B-movie effects and a frankly silly plot, I really enjoyed it.
Saving the best till last is 187 Times by Joel D. Wynkoop, who also stars as the amusingly named James Kirk. I love time travel stuff and this didn't disappoint. Picking up deep in the time travelling exploits of Kirk, who is on his one hundred and eighty seventh attempt to fix the timeline, in order to not only prevent the world ending virus from being released into the world, but also to save his wife's murder. This was a wonderful film, I loved how Kirk is constantly travelling all the place, from the 1970's up to the 1950's, with the aid of his wrist watch mounted A.I companion. He literally spends seconds in time periods, but each time he makes sure to remove his time travelling helmet. His whole outfit is so purposely bad looking, and the effects where actually not that bad. Leaping all over time, having conversations with people he knows, but the viewer hasn't been introduced to, this was a wild ride that I loved every second of.
At a two hour run time it did feel like Doomsday Stories could have done with some editing, by that I guess I mean A Broken Promise specifically as that one was a slow introduction to the anthology, solely due to the long moments of not much happening and the more serious tone. Thankfully, the second half was a lot better, and I think it was a good thing that the quality improved rather than decreased over the course of the movie. While this is about a kind of zombie apocalypse, there is only a small handful to be seen here, but for me that wasn't a problem, it was more distracting that these four different tales seemingly intended to all be about the same apocalypse felt wildly different in how events play out. It may have been a slightly mixed bag, but it goes to show you don't need the biggest budget to make an entertaining film. Doomsday Stories was due for release mid February and is priced at $20 including postage. For more information, contact Phil Herman or Joel D Wynkoop on Facebook messenger.
SCORE:
No comments:
Post a Comment